Chosen Solution
Hi all, The charger and light on my charger wouldn’t work when plugged in so I turned it off, tried cleaning with condensed air, then turned back on. Didn’t solve the issue. So I turned it off and tried an SMC reboot. After this, the computer will not restart. It was at about 22% battery when this happened. The charger was plugged in but not lit up when I did the reboot. I’ve tried several different ways to get the computer to reboot with no avail. I brought it in to campus IT and the guy thinks that the magsafe board needs replacing. What do you think? As background, I had a small water spill that made the computer shut down several months ago. Apple was no help and told me the logic board was likely shot. I dried it, my partner disassembled it, saw no damage at all, and it restarted fine and has worked great since. I had the no charging or light on thing happen once before, prior to water, but that was remedied with a new charger. I don’t want to buy a $70 part if that won’t fix it. Would an apple authorized dealer be able to tell me if it was that part that was the issue?
The problem with water damaged electronics is that they may work for some time following the spill, but they could fail at any time following it – even months later. The MagSafe connector on the computer is a magnet (no pun intended) for dirt and grime, and especially tiny bits of metallic dust. I’ve seen more than a few laptops and chargers get fried because of this. Get yourself a small wad of poster putty (available at Staples, etc), press it into the MagSafe connector on your computer, then remove. The putty is non-conductive but will grab ahold of any dirt and metallic bits inside of your MagSafe connector. Continue doing this until the connector is clean, then wipe down the connector with a Q-Tip and a tiny bit of isopropyl alcohol to get the rest. Now plug in A DIFFERENT charger and see if the computer charges and/or starts up.
